


for god's sake, hence, and trouble us not

by strikethesun



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, Henry VI Part 3 - Shakespeare, Richard III - Shakespeare
Genre: Canon-Typical Ableism, F/M, Ghosts, Introspection, Period-Typical Ableism, anne having actual thoughts/feelings/goals/desires, poor edward of lancaster. i'm sorry for being a little mean to you in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28097238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikethesun/pseuds/strikethesun
Summary: arise, dissembler.Anne contemplates Richard's proposal, but has to say goodbye to a certain someone first.
Relationships: mentions of Anne Neville/Richard III, slight past Anne Neville/Edward of Lancaster
Comments: 9
Kudos: 7
Collections: Histories Ficathon XI





	for god's sake, hence, and trouble us not

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeeThemFlying](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeThemFlying/gifts).



She watched him limp away. 

Even as he faded out of view, the warmth refused to leave her cheeks, her neck, her breast, her…

Anne shuddered.  _ No.  _ She clutched her new ring so tightly that its gem began to draw blood. Forcing herself to imagine Edward, her poor, sweet, dead husband, she found his image increasingly blurry, as though she were trying to look at him through the stained glass windows that had thrown splotches of colored light on them at their wedding. She remembered the light more clearly than she remembered him; was he smiling or solemn? What about herself? Details such as the weight of her dress and the sweat that trickled down her back were easier to recall than Edward’s eyes, or the feeling of his hands in hers, or a single goddamn thing that he ever said to her. She remembered him being kind, but in the most forgettable of ways; he had neither the bold, quick wit of his mother nor the saintliness ascribed to his father.  _ His father,  _ Anne thought,  _ who I am expected to mourn as though we ever met. And to mourn Edward too, as though we ever knew one another. _

Without realizing it, Anne had made her way back home, back to her rooms. The image of Richard, the  _ smile  _ that he left her with, refused to stay at the door; she had an urge to hit her head against the thick stone wall until the thought of him was knocked out. But of course, Anne knew that that wouldn’t fully get rid of the man, because there was another Richard limping around in the depths of her memory, the Richard of her childhood at Middleham. 

There was a time, Anne considered, when Richard had seemed like a fairly normal child to her, but that normalcy seemed not to register with anyone else around her. His uneven gait and shoulders to match were the target of ridicule even then, but Anne hadn’t known many boys her own age, and were it not for George’s presence in tandem, she might have well assumed that the lump on Richard’s back was simply a boyhood phase that one must straighten up out of in order to become a man like her father, tall and broad and invincible. As it was, though, she heard everything from the whispers of the servants to the muffled sobs of her imposing great-aunt, Richard’s own mother, when she retired to her chamber after watching her son excitedly demonstrate how he had managed to find a stance that made it possible for him to practice his skill with the sword. _Oh Lord, why do you loathe us so?_ Aunt Cecily had whimpered. Anne wasn’t aware before then that the Lord _did_ loathe their family, but she began to take it to heart—and so did Richard, darkening Richard, who spent increasingly less time trying to grab the attention of some audience to watch him defeat his opponent in combat and more time _doing_ it in stony silence. 

And what else had occurred? War, as it always does. War had seeped into the gaps of their lives and widened them, every single gap, even the ones that no one had been able to see before. Richard was no longer a child playing at battle, instead he was barely a man forced to live it. It struck Anne in her moment of introspection that she genuinely had no clue what these years had done to Richard; from the glimpses she got at George in vulnerable, wine-fueled moments with her sister, even the most good-natured and amiable of children could grow into hardened men after only drawing sword once or twice, while Richard seemed to her to have already been shockingly hardened for just a boy. Where George had grown more solemn, however, Richard had become almost unrecognizably playful—there was a mirth to his eyes that Anne never thought she would ever see again, but it was by no means the  _ same  _ mirth that had accompanied the picnics and games of a lifetime ago. No, this was something else—joy in her sorrow? No, perhaps not hers specifically—his suit had at least an  _ air  _ of authenticity, and she couldn’t imagine what she could have accomplished in the past few years to make him hate her to the point of sadism—but the sorrow of people like the former queen. That joy must have been reignited as soon as he saw his own handiwork again, that dreadful handiwork that Anne was obligated to pretend she was horrified by.

Anne had stood there over the bier, attempting to dredge up enough emotion to be believed, first by thinking about what she had been told about King Henry (not much; her father had harped on the “incompetent fool” string for as long as she could remember up until his turn, and even Margaret and Edward had tended to reminisce about him in the abstract, either as though they couldn’t be bothered to remember the specifics or as though that would have hurt too badly in their exile), then by thinking about Edward, whose death had preciptated his father’s, but both of those topics inspired nothing but a frightening ambivalence. What _had_ actually managed to work, though, at least for a moment, was contemplating Margaret, who had been unexpectedly kind to her and whose parting words at Tewkesbury, muttered and half-crazed, had sent a chill down her spine— “ _my God, he’s going to kill Henry now, too,_ _and why stop there?”_

Anne sighed. Her reverie had so thoroughly enraptured her that she hadn’t noticed until then that the sun was already beginning to set; it had been broad daylight when Richard abandoned her to this agonizing decision. But it wasn’t much of a decision, was it? Sure, Anne  _ could  _ have rejected him. She could change her mind at any moment and run off to a convent—there were always other young noblewomen who would give him a similar boost in wealth and status, and could provide him with an heir (if that was even something he desired; if so, he never showed the same inclination for it that his brothers did). But as she had a small meal, slowly got ready for bed, and pulled the covers up to her chin, Anne knew that she would do no such thing. She wanted to be loved. She wanted to be known. She wanted to be remembered for something other than having been  _ briefly,  _ tragically married to a doomed prince.

Anne awoke to a faint rustling at the end of her bed. A familiar face appeared before her, though the bloodstains and the translucent pallor were new.

“Edward.”

Her teenaged husband smiled. “Anne. How have the last couple months treated you?”

She looked down at her hands and made no attempt to conceal the ring Richard had left on one of her long, thin fingers. “Better than they’ve treated you, I suppose.”

Edward let out a sharp laugh at that. “Oh no, I would beg to differ with you there, my dear wife. I’ve been catching up with old relatives, actually. Meeting new ones, too. Most of my grandparents, for example.” He nearly started listing them, then shook his head. “Meanwhile, you seem to have been positively… _ tormented.” _

Anne felt a chill run down her spine. “Uh, how do you mean?”

He gestured limply at her hands clasped in her lap, eyeing the garish ring. “That wretched Yorkist...ah, what did you call him? A  _ lump of foul deformity,  _ or something to that effect?” Edward shrugged. “Richard. The ugly one. The one who helped kill me and then made off to make my mother a widow. He’s been pursuing you ever since. More than just an offense to myself as your ex-husband, I imagine it must be a dreadful offense to you.”

A nameless sense of pride welled up in Anne’s chest. “Richard’s courtship has been… _ unexpected,  _ to say the least, but he’s undeniably charming.” She met Edward’s slack-faced expression with an icy stare. “He shows a lot of interest in me, makes me feel beautiful—you know, as a gentleman courting a fine lady and wealthy heiress should do.”

Edward crossed his arms; Anne tried not to notice how she could see right through them to his chest still covered in blood. “You act as though either of us had a choice in our marriage. Was I supposed to pretend we weren’t simply a method of making an alliance secure?”

“I was prepared to be your queen, and the mother of your children, Edward. If you and your mother were planning on dumping me in favor of some French bride once your poor father got back on the throne, it certainly wasn’t  _ my _ plan.”

“That wasn’t ours either and you know it,” Edward groaned. “My mother was quite fond of you. Told me you were like the daughter she had wanted so badly to have.”

Anne’s eyes darted away and landed on a flickering candle on a nearby table. “I...didn’t know she said that. But I knew she liked me. I wasn’t sure  _ why  _ at the time, but I think I’ve figured it out since.” Anne slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed, stood up, and walked across the room to face Edward directly. “She could tell I was the sort of young woman to make my own decisions when men failed me, as they so often failed her and all the rest of us. Like it or not, I’ve been abandoned. Shipwrecked, even. And now there’s a very wealthy and powerful man who claims he would do absolutely  _ anything  _ for me.”

Edward stood his ground as Anne approached, though he hovered slightly over the floor. “And have you forgotten how he gleefully raced to my father’s prison and stabbed him over and over with no hint of hesitation or remorse? I already knew your tears for me and for him were an act, Anne, but would you really turn your back on my mother like that? After you, yourself, admitted how kind she was to you?”

After a moment’s reflection, Anne pouted. “I didn’t marry your mother, now did I? I have no obligation to her or anyone else at this point. Plus, I actually think Richard is kind of sexy in that great black cloak of his.” Before Edward could react, Anne clapped her hands together in the air he inhabited, and his image disappeared in a cloud of smoke. 


End file.
